Gingersnap
09-29-2010, 01:00 PM
Sep. 27 2010 - 9:55 am |
How To Hide Your Face From Big Brother? Try Sunglasses
By ANDY GREENBERG
Four obscuring techniques that defeated facial recognition software.
http://i54.tinypic.com/2eyarlt.png
Don’t like the idea of a government or corporation tracking your mug around the Web or the real world? Alex Kilpatrick offers a few tips to foil facial recognition software used by those who would monitor your whereabouts: Don’t bother growing a beard, or wearing a hat. Instead, invest in a pair of oversize Gucci knockoffs.
In a presentation he plans to make at the IgniteNYC event that kicks off the Web 2.0 New York conference, Kilpatrick will give a talk on defeating the technological tools of the modern–or future– surveillance state.
“Outside of a warrant, I don’t want to be tracked, whether it’s a government or a store,” he says.”So I think you have a moral obligation to mess with these surveillance techniques short of breaking the law.”
Kilpatrick knows something about the growing power of technology to track individuals. He’s sold facial recognition software to the military for security purposes and founded Tactical Information Systems, a startup that hosts a cloud-based biometric platform. He’s also currently working on WanderID, a program that can help law enforcement or hospitals identify lost Alzheimers or other mentally-disabled patients who can’t identify themselves.
But like any good privacy paranoiac, Kilpatrick can easily imagine how the face-tracking software he sells can be used for less benevolent purposes. So for his Ignite NYC talk, he performed a series of experiments to find just what sorts of obscuring techniques can defeat a common facial recognition algorithm known as Eigenfaces, testing an off-the-shelf implementation of that algorithm in a program called Neurotechnology.
The results, he says, offer some simple lessons in the modern art of disguise: Avoid symmetry, and focus on obscuring the area around your eyes.
More at the link. Defeat Big Brother now with knock-offs!
Forbes (http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/09/27/how-to-hide-your-face-from-big-brother-try-sunglasses/)
How To Hide Your Face From Big Brother? Try Sunglasses
By ANDY GREENBERG
Four obscuring techniques that defeated facial recognition software.
http://i54.tinypic.com/2eyarlt.png
Don’t like the idea of a government or corporation tracking your mug around the Web or the real world? Alex Kilpatrick offers a few tips to foil facial recognition software used by those who would monitor your whereabouts: Don’t bother growing a beard, or wearing a hat. Instead, invest in a pair of oversize Gucci knockoffs.
In a presentation he plans to make at the IgniteNYC event that kicks off the Web 2.0 New York conference, Kilpatrick will give a talk on defeating the technological tools of the modern–or future– surveillance state.
“Outside of a warrant, I don’t want to be tracked, whether it’s a government or a store,” he says.”So I think you have a moral obligation to mess with these surveillance techniques short of breaking the law.”
Kilpatrick knows something about the growing power of technology to track individuals. He’s sold facial recognition software to the military for security purposes and founded Tactical Information Systems, a startup that hosts a cloud-based biometric platform. He’s also currently working on WanderID, a program that can help law enforcement or hospitals identify lost Alzheimers or other mentally-disabled patients who can’t identify themselves.
But like any good privacy paranoiac, Kilpatrick can easily imagine how the face-tracking software he sells can be used for less benevolent purposes. So for his Ignite NYC talk, he performed a series of experiments to find just what sorts of obscuring techniques can defeat a common facial recognition algorithm known as Eigenfaces, testing an off-the-shelf implementation of that algorithm in a program called Neurotechnology.
The results, he says, offer some simple lessons in the modern art of disguise: Avoid symmetry, and focus on obscuring the area around your eyes.
More at the link. Defeat Big Brother now with knock-offs!
Forbes (http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/09/27/how-to-hide-your-face-from-big-brother-try-sunglasses/)